John Dillinger (1903-1934). was as much a celebrity as any movie star, sports hero, or opera singer. Along with Bonnie and Clyde and Ma Barker's Boys, Dillinger made the Depression a little less depressing with his daring robberies, escapes, and shoot-outs. His antics played out like a soap opera in America's newspapers. Syracuse Journal, March 3, 1934 CROWN POINT, Indiana (INS) — With a wooden toy pistol, John Dillinger, America’s most notorious killer and bank robber, cowed 24 heavily armed guards in the Lake County jail today and escaped, in broad daylight, with a fellow prisoner. Seizing two machine guns from their jailers and forcing a deputy sheriff and a garage attendant to accompany them, Dillinger and his companion sped north out of Crown Point in a stolen car toward Chicago. Dillinger’s escape was the second of his career and among the most spectacular breaks in the history of American crime. Obtaining the machine guns, Dillinger and his companion, Henry Youngblood, cowed the guard and deputies, forced them into a cell and backed out of the jailhouse, locking the doors after them. At the same time, it was reported Dillinger liberated three other prisoners, telling the three men to “scram.” The desperado then ordered George Blunk to go with him. Earlier in the jailhouse, Dillinger had called out to the guards and deputies: “Don’t move or I’ll fill you full of lead.” Outside, he singled out a black police sedan, forced Blunk into the driver’s seat, climbed in beside him, and, with his machine gun seized in the jail, poked into the deputy’s side, ordered: “Now drive, and drive like hell.” Early reports of the jailbreak, erroneous because of the hysteria of the guards and deputies who were victimized, said Youngblood had liberated Dillinger after walking into the cell house with a machine gun. What happened was that as a guard approached his cell about 9:30 a.m., Dillinger covered him with what appeared to be a heavy pistol and ordered him to open his cell door, under threats of immediate death. As the guard opened the door, Dillinger seized his sub-machine gun, dropped his wooden pistol to the floor and swung the gun to cover the entrance to the cell row where another guard stood. Threatening death to the guard if he made a sound or move, Dillinger liberated the other prisoners, one of them Youngblood. Marching into the jail office, Dillinger covered the six regular deputy sheriffs and 16 extra guards with his machine gun. His companion seized another machine gun and the pair drove the guards and deputies back into the cell tier and locked them in. Youngblood was being held on a charge of murder. The three other prisoners made no attempt to flee after leaving the jail, and surrendered to deputies in front of the jail as soon as they arrived. Dillinger’s escape came from what was reputed to be a foolproof jail, watched over by Mrs. Lillian Holley, sheriff of Lake County. Mrs. Holley was immediately summoned to the scene. Prosecutor Robert G. Estill of Lake County was also summoned, and spread the alarm to police and sheriffs’ forces of surrounding towns and counties and notified the Chicago detective bureau. Crown Point and Lake County authorities had boasted of the “fool proof” qualities of their jail when Dillinger was locked up there a month ago, following his capture in Tucson, Arizona, on January 25. Dillinger was awaiting trial for the murder of a policeman in a $24,000 holdup of an East Chicago bank on January 15. A paroled convict from the Indiana state penitentiary in Michigan City, Dillinger had been seized in Dayton, Ohio, on September, 1933, on charges of participating in several bank robberies. It was later reported that Sheriff Holley and Prosecutor Estill were especially embarrassed about the escape. When Dillinger had arrived in Crown Point with a police escort a few weeks earlier, the sheriff and prosecutor, along with other local dignitaries, had been photographed with the outlaw. Estill seemed particularly friendly toward Dillinger, who also was in a chummy mood. Holley and Estill would later lose their jobs after making Crown Point and its city police and sheriff's deputies the laughing stock of the nation. It was widely assumed the "gun" Dillinger used for his escape was made of wood. Another popular story was that Dillinger had fashioned the gun from a bar of soap and shoe polish. Some newspapers insisted Dillinger must have used a real gun that had been smuggled into the prison by a female visitor. Apparently the authorities were reluctant to allow people to believe lawmen could be so easily fooled. Later research showed Dillinger's escape was helped when the jail allowed a visitor who slipped Dillinger a gun. That visitor may have been Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, Dillinger's girl friend. But isn't it more fun to believe Dillinger used razor blades to carve his get-out-of-jail free gun from a piece of wood in his cell? In the end, it was a dame who did him in, that infamous "lady in red" whose sartorial advertisement alerted waiting police to their prey. The movie might have been Manhattan Melodrama, but Chicago got its share of melodrama on a steamy, hot July 23, 1934. The theater was air cooled, as cool as the morgue Dillinger would soon occupy. |
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